"often you can get better deals just by contacting the vendor directly."

That's correct. What makes things even fierce for them is that people first use the online third-party sites to search for the "deals" and then contact the airlines and the hotels thereafter. I wonder if analytics can help them that much to reverve that situation.

Noreen, interesting video giving a chance to see a human face behind the online interface.

Recent reports I've seen, mainly on TV, indicate that these online third-party sites are having an increasingly difficult time competing with the airlines and hotels themselves — often you can get better deals just by contacting the vendor directly. This suggests lots of stress. I'd wonder how much better analytics can actually help in this highly competitive situation.

@Noreen, thanks for sharing this video with Joe Megibow. He gives a great overview on Expedia's focus on analytics. I'm encouraged to hear him say that Expedia realizes the give and take between its needs and its customers' desire to share -- or not -- data about themselves.

2015 Visual Analytics Interactive RoadshowSAS(r) experts are coming to a city near you in a series of live, interactive workshops focused on SAS Visual Analytics, including how to prepare your data for VA, the integration of VA with Office Analytics and a Visual Statistics demo.

LEADERS FROM THE BUSINESS AND IT COMMUNITIES DUEL OVER CRITICAL TECHNOLOGY ISSUES

The Current Discussion

Visual Analytics: Who Carries the Onus?

The Issue: Data visualization is an up-and-coming technology for businesses that want to deliver analytical results in a visual way, enabling analysts the ability to spot patterns more easily and business users to absorb the insight at a glance and better understand what questions to ask of the data. But does it make more sense to train everybody to handle the visualization mandate or bring on visualization expertise? Our experts are divided on the question.

The hospitality industry gathers massive amounts of customer data, and mining that data effectively can yield tremendous results in terms of improved CRM, better-targeted marketing spend, and more efficient back-end processes. Roger Ares, vice president of analytics at Hyatt Corp., discusses the ways he and his staff use big data.

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